The folks at Placester created an infographic that is the beginners guide to social media marketing. Key Insights:

61% of U.S. adults on more than one social network have “unlikes” or “unfollower” brands on social media.79% of Twitter users who see Tweets from both a brand and users tweeting about a brand take action online or offline.82% of consumers trust a company more if they are involved with social media.Social media sharing now accounts for 54% of information consumers use in buying decisions.46% of global Internet users said social media influenced their purchase decisions.
Via Lauren Moss

Basically you need to calm down, close your eyes, take deep breaths and practice mind control by meditating. Just see some beautiful ,mountains, skies or any natural part of the environment and just enjoy.........

Understanding how color works isn’t just for artists dipping their hands into paint and pigments all day long. Anyone using content marketing needs to understand the basics of Color Theory, because you are using color in your content.

There is a new invisible giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is getting harder and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts and minds online.

(From the article): Content Marketing is a tricky idea. You need to create authoritative content, but just enough that community is forming comfortably. Talk to much, in the wrong voice or at the wrong time sand you kill your fledgling community (easy to do).

Not all content marketing practices yield equal results. In today's landscape of SEO and social media, shareability is one of the most important qualities for a content marketing campaign. So what makes content shareable and why does it matter?

Infographic on The Future of Web and Technology describes on the trending products and innovations growing rapidly year by year. Augmented reality and its products being the core of advanced technologies in the future. Google glass, augmented reality based wearable gadgets, 3d printers, cloud computing, educational technology, leap motion, another AR product Oculus Rift, AR contact lenses, agent smartwatch and related gadgets, all contribute to the web and technology.

Revenues from ads running on smartphones and tablets will outstrip those from newspaper, magazine and radio ads for the first time in the U.S. this year, according to a new reportfrom eMarketer.

Mobile ad revenues will jump 83%, to $17.7 billion. That represents almost 10% of all ad spending, as people quickly spend more and more time peering at the smartphones and kicking back with their tablets–a total of two hours and 51 minutes a day, up 32 minutes from just a year ago. Mobile ad spend will trail only that of television commercials, of course, and desktop and laptop ads...

As a remote team of 12, we’ve come to depend on Google Hangout video calls for our weekly standup meetings. The tool is free, quick to access and familiar to everyone on the team. Though like any other video conferencing software, Hangouts comes with hangups.

Can you hear me?

Can you invite my other Gmail account?

If you use Hangouts, you’ve been there (or soon will be there). And when that day comes you’re googling incessantly looking for the answer. Hopefully, you’ll need to search no more.

The following Google Hangout video call guide shows you how to get started, invite participants, record a call, collaborate over a Google Doc and more....

This article made so much sense to me that I had to sit down and listen to the podcast right away. Here's some comments that stood out for me:

Brands are struggling. What's missing is conflict.

Need to inject conflict without damaging the brand.

Too many provide a false picture – everything is wonderful.

Have to (provide and) overcome the conflict or the listener won’t like it.

Conflict – get as close as possible to death.

Conflict – best kind of universal truth.

How to find your org/brands conflict? Need to take a softer look at the notion of conflict (the term conflict brings up certain imagery, feelings). Conflict is simply something to overcome. Ask yourself - do we want to be a company who wants to overcome things?

There's also a great made-up example (Donut Corp) provided of how an organization could find it's conflict.

So you’ve established your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and (why not) Snapchat social media profiles for your business, and now you get to sit back and enjoy all that sweet, sweet engagement.

Right? Wrong. You have to do the work. Which means posting regular updates, developing a consistent style, commenting on the posts of others, being generous with praise, helping whenever you can, connecting with relevant contacts and simply putting yourself out there.

This infographic from Sushi proposes 7 ways to increase traffic on your social media channels.

The hard part can be taking the time to comment on other people's posts and updates, but that's where the real social interaction takes place, and that is, after all, the core of successful social media.

"Re-purposing" content is pretty easy and it's fun to create new ways of presenting your content. Sharing content on multiple social media channels packaged for different audiences is also very important as part of a comprehensive content marketing strategy.

Video is the future (or present) of content marketing, yet marketers seem to shun YouTube other than for viral videos. YouTube has a massive audience, it's ideal for branding purposes and it benefits your Google SEO. This guide shows you what content you should be curating, how to get a top ranking on YouTube and how to convert that following to your own platform.

What people are sharing and how they’re sharing it is changing fast. A new infographic from Go-Gulf, a web design team based in Dubai, has gathered the latest data, which is now available in this newly released (July 2014) social media infographic. Here are the highlights…

Far too many business owners have never taken the time to master the skills of effective email management, and their lack of skill in this area affects their productivity, and makes it difficult for them to fully focus on the key issues facing their business.

All of the popular email program's, come complete with an amazing range of tools to make the management of email a breeze, and every business owner should maximise their use of these tools.

This excellent article, suggests that anyone using an email program should take time to learn how to use all of the power of the program they choose to use, and it offers eight tips that business owners can implement to better manage their email.

Have you ever wondered how top online retailers are using their marketing spend? Well, now you can find out!

A new infographic reveals how online retailers will be using their marketing budgets over the coming year, including what they plan to spend on mobile and social capabilities.

According to the infographic, which comes from WBR’s eTail team, retailer marketers will be investing more in mobile capabilities, SEO, and multi-channel initiatives over the coming months. Email and search marketing still dominate their spend, however, with 61% of the marketers surveyed spending more than 10% of their budget on both email and search.

When it comes to ROI, email and search marketing still dominate as social media continues to struggle to show a return. In fact, while 82% of marketers are using social media for engagement, only 36% are using it to drive sales.

"A basic tenet of running lean is validating a product or feature ideally without having to building it first. This makes complete sense when you look at every product or feature as it’s own customer factory."

"Lots people want to get started with game based learning, gamification and serious games in their training. We’ve been curating game related content for over a year and a half while conducting our own research and case studies. Here are 100 articles related to games and learning. Some of them are research-based, while others just offer an interesting perspective to spark discussion. Take what you need and share this with a colleague."

I have recently been working with organizations on how the introduction of gamification into their training and development strategy plans for employee skill development. The interesting thing as well is the application of the concepts to both hard and soft skills, that allow for returning to the results in the future as well as updating of skills as the individual progresses.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.